


ere he 'scapes

by Antares8



Series: The Pilgrim's Progress [20]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon & Comics)
Genre: Beast Wirt, Dreams vs. Reality, Gen, Rescue, So THAT'S What That Magical Artifact Does
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29575500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antares8/pseuds/Antares8
Summary: Wirt has been captured, and his immortal soul is in danger of going out. Beatrice must find and save him before the Dark Lantern runs out of oil.
Relationships: Beatrice & Wirt (Over the Garden Wall)
Series: The Pilgrim's Progress [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1051850
Comments: 34
Kudos: 149





	ere he 'scapes

ere he 'scapes

Wirt sits on his bed and rubs at his temples. He feels so strange—not quite sick, but oddly… off. Like his head is lighter than it's supposed to be, his senses duller, an emptiness behind his heart. Is he coming down with something? He might be coming down with something.

His mother calls his name, tells him that it's time for breakfast. The boy startles, his eyes snapping open. He's greeted by the familiar sight of his bedroom: a bit messy, full of books, with posters on the wall and a poetry journal on his desk.

When he stands, the sensation of offness swells. He blinks rapidly, then grimaces, shaking his head to clear it. He grabs his backpack—it should be full already—and starts out the door, automatically turning his head as he walks through the frame.

His family is already eating breakfast, Amy and Jonathan and Greg and—and no one else. No one's visiting. Wirt gives his head another shake.

"You okay?" his mother asks.

"I think so? I probably just didn't sleep well last night." He has vague half-memories of unsettling dreams, but the fragmented images drift apart when he reaches for them.

(Has his voice always sounded like that?)

Amy puts her hand on his brow. She's taller than he is, her chin level with his forehead, but Wirt had already known that. She'd always been taller than him. Why the heck did he notice that?

"Well, you don't have a fever. You sure you want to go to school?"

"Yeah." Maybe that'll clear his head.

There's another moment of offness when Wirt gets milk for his cereal. His stomach does something twisty and unpleasant, and he pauses for thirty full seconds before Greg snaps him out of it. Mumbling more apologies—I really must not have slept well—Wirt continues with his breakfast. He isn't hungry, but that's hardly unusual. It's not weird in the slightest. (Though it's probably further proof that he is indeed coming down with something.)

Except he's distracted almost immediately by the sight of his hands. There is nothing unusual about his hands. They're perfectly ordinary in every possible way: regular number of fingers, correct proportions, reasonably well-kept nails, no distinguishing scars or moles or freckles. Yet looking at them is disconcerting, somehow.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

Wirt looks up, meets his mother's concerned eyes. "Yeah," he mumbles. "I'll just go to bed early tonight, that's all." He smiles weakly. "And maybe I should make some tea, get some caffeine in me." He isn't tired any more than he is hungry, but you're supposed to get a lot of sleep when you're sick. It hastens healing.

"You can bring along a soda for lunch," Amy tells him. "Just promise you'll see the nurse if you start feeling sick, okay?"

"Okay."

Wirt eats, listening in on his family's conversation with half an ear. It's mostly just Greg babbling on about the Thanksgiving projects they're doing at school. Apparently it's almost Thanksgiving, which is another thing that Wirt had already known and that shouldn't cause him to pull up short in confusion.

But now that he's looking at Greg, his brother is starting to seem off, too. He's—he's—

"What d'you think, Wirt?"

"Sorry, what was the question?"

"Do you think that jellyfish like jelly?"

Wirt has no idea when the conversation changed to sea creatures. "Sure."

He nearly leaves home without his shoes on, but Amy catches him at the last moment. He'd been too busy frowning at Greg's little jacket, the one he'd gotten last spring that still had a bit more room to grow. Then Greg is off with Jonathan, and Wirt begins the walk to the high school.

The cold surprises him with its intensity. He shivers, pulling his coat shut. Other than the chill, though, it's a fairly pleasant day, sunny and calm, and the trees are gorgeous in their autumnal splendor.

School is uneventful. He meets up with his friends, goes through classes, panics a little when he's called to work an algebra problem on the whiteboard. Thankfully, he survives the experience.

Wirt sits back down, slightly embarrassed by his mathematical fumbling but mostly just glad it's over. Something about his own response nags at him, tickling the corner of his brain that's been complaining of oddities all day. He taps his pencil absently against his notebook (computers aren't allowed in algebra, and even if they were, Wirt doesn't have his own laptop) as he tries to figure out why that is. It's just a minor mishap, he reasons, the sort of thing that literally every student ever has suffered through. He shouldn't be making such a big deal about it.

But then a memory surfaces from just five, maybe six weeks ago: him struggling through another algebra problem in front of all his peers. He'd returned to his desk red-faced with mortification, convinced that the shame would follow him all his days. Now, though, he finds he's more embarrassed by his own former attitude than messing up in math class.

When did that happen? No, seriously, _when did that happen_?

The bell rings even though Wirt could have sworn that they still had another fifteen minutes. The boy startles but obediently starts to gather up his things, only to freeze at what he sees in his notebook.

He's drawn a lantern. That shouldn't paralyze him, shouldn't make the emptiness in his chest writhe, shouldn't make him feel like someone's unwanted hands are gripping his very soul. Yet it does.

"You'll be late for lunch," Ms. Goldstein tells him.

"I—yeah."

Maybe that soda will clear his head.

* * *

Beatrice meets the party by pure coincidence. She's walking the road calling for Wirt and Andrew both when a familiar voice yells her name. She runs forward, grabbing her little brother in a hug.

"What were you thinking?" Beatrice demands. "Why the heck did you go out of the protection spell?"

"You mean like you are now?" he snarks automatically, drawing back.

Beatrice looks at the party that's escorting her brother, reflexively seeking a tall figure all in black. She doesn't see him. "Where's Wirt?"

Andrew's eyes brim. "I don't know. The witches took him away."

* * *

It's hard to focus on his homework. That's bad, because there's enough of it to devour his every waking moment even if he has all his concentration. The material feels distant, somehow, a bit like it does after summer break. He can't quite remember everything.

Wirt rubs his eyes. Maybe some cool air will snap him out of it. He steps outside.

It's better out here. Something in him uncoils, sighs its relief. He smiles.

The boy works until evening falls, when his mother calls him in for supper. He eats, though he's still not hungry, and makes pleasant conversation with Jonathan until he realizes that he's _making pleasant conversation with Jonathan_ , and since when has he done that? No, seriously, he genuinely cannot remember.

"Does something feel different to you guys?" he asks.

"Nope," chirps Greg. The adults agree.

Come to think of it, his relationship with Greg is a lot better than it's ever been. All of his relationships are healthier; he ate lunch with friends today rather than watching Sara's group from the fringes of the cafeteria—and speaking of Sara, thinking about her no longer makes butterflies flutter in his belly.

It's like coming into a room and all the furniture has been moved a couple of inches in various directions, except he's the room. Everything is familiar but not, and Wirt comes to the sickening, sudden realization that he does not know himself, not anymore, nor does he know why he's changed. It's all one big unknown.

(Unknown.)

Greg bursts into song. Wirt jumps almost out of his skin, his thoughts a jumbled mess. _Why_ does that keep happening?

He goes back outside, flicking the porch lights on so he can read, but he's still distracted. Something about the darkness makes him want to sing. He compromises with himself: once he's done with all this blasted algebra, he'll get out his clarinet. It's not quite cold enough to damage the instrument if he plays it outside.

He finishes the math, then lovingly assembles his clarinet before realizing that he's forgotten his sheet music inside. That's fine. He can start out with scales, then go onto the pieces he's memorized over the years.

But the song that rises from his clarinet is not one that he knows, at least not consciously. He knows it on a deeper level, the same part that sighs in the darkness. He knows the melody, but the words are another matter. They blur in his mind.

Then a voice begins to sing.

" _Come, wayward souls,  
who wander through the darkness…."_

Wirt looks towards the voice, and the shadows look back with luminous pale eyes.

"Wiiiiiirt!" Greg charges out the door. "Wirt, we made popcorn!" He tugs at his brother's hand.

The eyes are gone.

The eyes are gone, but they'll be back… and something is very wrong.

* * *

"Tell us exactly what happened."

Normally, Peggy O'Sialia's sternness is hidden beneath a thick layer of cheer. But she has thirteen children, and they all listen to her.

The mayor of Maximspot begins to talk.

* * *

The next day, during lunch, Wirt conducts an experiment. He's sitting alone, having made excuses about a headache and needing quiet; Mx. Ferris had kindly loaned him their room. So he sits alone at a desk with lunch he's not hungry for and grasps at the twisting filaments of offness that haunt him.

The intercom buzzes to life with some inane message about the Debate Club, startling Wirt out of his thoughts before he can make any real progress.

The boy stares in horror at the intercom, swallows hard. That could be a coincidence, except… every time he's tried to pursue the wrongness, someone or something has come along to interrupt him. He's not surprised that the intercom had buzzed to life, not really.

But that's crazy. Does he really think that the whole world is engaging in some telepathic conspiracy against him? That, what, everyone can read his mind and they've all decided to keep him from some terrible unknowable truth? Even if that were possible—and it's not—there's no way his family would go along with it.

…And now he's imagining a bunch of body-snatchers or possession scenarios. That's. Not helpful.

He needs to think about this logically. There has to be a saner solution than a telepathic conspiracy. There has to—

A pair of teenagers burst into the room, giggling and pawing at each other.

"Hey!" Wirt yells, indignant. Then he realizes that this is just another distraction, that he's getting too close to—something.

His fingers twine in his hair, scraping against his scalp. His wrist hurts.

A dream. This has to be a dream, because that's a lot less insane than the other option. He just needs to wake up and everything will be okay.

So Wirt pushes against whatever's keeping him asleep. Something squeezes his neck in a searing-hot grip, and the boy (Pilgrim) claws at it with fingers that are too short.

(A collar of twig and iron and antlerbone develops another miniscule crack.)

Wirt sits on the edge of his bed, his eyes closed, rubbing at his temples. His head feels odd, wrong, off, and something vital is missing. He doesn't think he's sick, but maybe he's coming down with something.

A wave of déjà vu leaves him dizzy and breathless, but before he can examine the feeling, his mother calls him down for breakfast.

* * *

The people of Maximspot don't know everything that happened to the Beast-that-isn't. They hadn't been part of the conspiracy against him. All they knew was that after the witches had knocked Wirt out with their magic, three of the four had taken him away, while the fourth worked to extract something from a new patch of bramblethorn, something deeper in than the chains with which they'd bound their prisoner. Andrew's escort had left before the witches returned.

The mayor doesn't say it, but she clearly thinks that the Pilgrim is dead.

"He's alive," Beatrice states. "Remember the Hollow Winter after the Beast died? And then when Wirt came back and took up his mantle, we felt that, too."

"We need to help him," Andrew whispers. "He can't die, he can't. You have to help me find him."

"We will," Peggy vows.

"And so will they," Beatrice declares, pointing at the townsfolk.

"No we—"

"Wirt is the place-spirit of the entire Unknown," Beatrice tells them. "Either these people want to replace him, or they intend to keep him out of the way until the Dark Lantern goes out on its own. What do you think will happen to us if our place-spirit dies without a successor?"

"The same thing that happened to the Foamrush River," Andrew supplies. "Probably that."

They're beginning to look uneasy now, gazes darting back and forth. Beatrice presses her advantage. "We've all felt the effects he's had. The forest is friendlier. The air is lighter. The edelwood trees flowered for him. Do you really want to lose that for more of the Hollow Winter? How long do you think the forest would have survived if that winter hadn't ended?"

"She's being ridiculous," a man bursts out. "He's not a place-spirit. The world is better off without Beasts. We just weren't used to it. That's the only reason anything felt off."

"Right, you're an idiot." Beatrice ignores his outraged squawking, looking back at the others. "The rest of you are smarter, right? You all understand why we need to find Wirt."

"And why shouldn't Bart or one of the others take over?" the man demands. "This one's already murdered somebody."

"Is Bart one of the people who kidnapped me?" Andrew snaps. "Because I feel like that should disqualify him and his accomplices."

"They didn't hurt you," the man sneers. "Not like your precious Pilgrim murdered Felicity's brother."

"Would that be the guy who tried to offer Wirt his pick of human sacrifices and has presumably done the exact same thing with the Beast?"

"Of course your monster would claim something like that."

"Yeah, him and the kids he rescued."

"Enough!" Patrick speaks up only rarely, but when he does, his children know to listen. "Beatrice, you're not getting anywhere with him. We need to start for Maximspot as soon as we can."

She wants to fight, to keep fighting, to yell and scream and rage, but that won't do any good. "…Okay, Dad. You're right."

* * *

It's a gray, drizzly day, the sort where the skies can open at a moment's notice. Wirt half-runs to school, hood drawn over his head. He'd almost forgotten his shoes on the way out. That, combined with a few oddities during breakfast that he couldn't quite put his finger on (Greg kept blurting out weird, random questions every few seconds), leaves him off-kilter. He's almost late and, to make matters worse, completely blanks on his locker combination once he gets to school. He barely slides into his desk before the bell rings.

The morning passes well enough. None of his teachers call on him, not even Ms. Goldstein in algebra. That gives him more time to wonder about whether or not he's coming down with something, because he definitely feels weird and it's not getting better. Alas, his classmates are particularly rambunctious today—which is weird, because normally they're sleepier on rainy days—so it's hard to focus on anything, much less something so nebulous.

Maybe, Wirt speculates as he sits among his friends, it has something to do with Thanksgiving coming up in a week, or maybe they're just happy it's Friday. Do they have a game coming up this weekend? He asks Sara, who confirms that they do, and is Wirt going to come? Maybe, but he's already swamped with homework. He'll have to see.

"You should come," says Jason Funderberker.

Wirt smiles at him. It's good to be wanted, to have people who actually want to be around him. It's good to just… not have any _real_ responsibilities, no thick morass of fear and distrust through which he must trudge. He likes laying the burden down.

(What burden?)

"We could do a study group," Paula suggests, "get our homework done together. What do you think, Wirt?"

"Yeah, I'd like that."

They spend the rest of lunch working out the logistics. It isn't until he's back to his locker that Wirt asks himself when they all became such good, casual friends.

* * *

The kids too young to help the search are being sent to their kin in Kenningdole. Junior is in charge of bringing them there and explaining the situation to their aunts and uncles. He'll join them once he's done. The rest of the family veers off onto the road to Maximspot.

They arrive as evening falls. Carol lets out a low whistle at the sight of the house Wirt had destroyed, apparently in the space of a single second. "I'm glad he's on our side," she says.

The hamlet doesn't have a proper inn, but there's a little tavern that's mostly used by farmers on brief trips to the underwhelming general store. The empty room above the tavern is mostly used by farmers who drank too much downstairs and can't be trusted to get home safely. It's crowded, but it's shelter.

The bartender is slightly overwhelmed by the onslaught, but she answers their questions (and takes their orders) as thoroughly as she can. Yes, four witches had gone off with the Pilgrim and the Dark Lantern. They'd returned a few hours later to announce that the Beast—their words, not mine, she clarified upon seeing Beatrice's expression—is bound and harmless and dying.

Beatrice could vomit. Dying. Wirt is _dying_.

It's nothing she hadn't suspected, but hearing the word so starkly said makes the reality of the danger Wirt's in really register. Her weird, wonderful friend with his poetry and his music and his dogged determination to fix the Beast's mistakes, gone forever.

(Also, if the Pilgrim dies without an heir, the entire world might unravel, but Beatrice is more focused on Wirt than the Beast's successor.)

"Which way did they go?" she demands.

It's dark and cold, and though Beatrice _knows_ that she should rest for morning, she can't just stay here and do nothing. Instead, she goes into the wood just a short distance and finds an owl. "The Caretaker is in trouble," she tells her. "Can you find him?"

The owl agrees to try and to spread the word. Beatrice feels a little better as she returns to the crowded inn room.

She's up before dawn, off to speak with the owl. No sign of him, the bird reports, but she'd told every other owl she'd met. They'd come to Maximspot if they saw anything.

Beatrice thanks the owl and marches into the forest, heading the direction that the witches had apparently taken her friend. She and her family fan out, shouting Wirt's name and asking every bird they come across for assistance.

The day continues. The sun travels from east to south to west. Beatrice's voice is hoarse from shouting. Her face is cold, her toes are numb, and her stomach is growling. She should start going back.

But then a bird lands on the tree ahead of her. It's a robin, the first of the season. "Did you find him?"

"No," the robin says. "Maybe. I found a fire-carrying thing. You wanted a fire-carrying thing too."

It could be a random lantern, or it could be Wirt's immortal soul. It's worth a try.

"Take me there."

* * *

Greg is babbling on about what he'd learned at school that day, a simplified, sanitized version of Thanksgiving's origin story. Wirt tries to pay attention, but every time his little brother mentions the Pilgrims, something _pings_ in the back of his brain. There's something about them that he needs to remember—no, not about the Pilgrims, about _a_ pilgrim.

Greg bursts into song, a little ditty about turkeys and squashes and pumpkin pie. There's no mention of the Pilgrims.

"What do you think, Wirt?"

"That's a great song," the older boy assures him. Greg doesn't look convinced. Has he realized that Wirt was paying almost no attention, too preoccupied with errant thoughts? Wirt continues, "In fact, you've inspired me! I'm going to get my clarinet and play accompaniment, okay?"

Greg beams at him. Wirt probably shouldn't do this—he has so much homework—but his brother is so happy. He'll just go to bed a bit later tonight.

" _Pilgrim_ ," a voice calls. It's low and rich like black velvet, and he recognizes it.

"Did you hear that?" Wirt asks. His skin is prickling all over.

"Hear what?"

" _Wirt_ ," the voice continues, more annoyance trickling in. " _You are dreaming. Wake up_."

"Dreaming?" he repeats quietly. Some of the pieces slot into place: why his younger body feels so unfamiliar, why Greg is too short even though Wirt can't remember him being any taller, why so much of his schooling slips through his memory, that woman with the weird crown he'd just barely glimpsed on the walk home, the inconsistencies with relationships. "Dreaming. I'm dreaming."

"No you're not," snaps Greg. No, not Greg, a dream fragment that looks like him.

He closes his eyes, reaches for wakefulness.

A band of fire tightens around his neck. He pushes against it and

Wirt sits on the edge of his bed rubbing his temples. An odd emptiness lurks behind his ribcage; his head feels strangely light; his eyes sting.

His mother calls him down for breakfast. It's creepily familiar even though it shouldn't be creepy at all. Amy does this all the time.

Yet something is wrong. He knows it in his bones.

* * *

Beatrice swears.

A flat, treeless expanse of ice spreads out before her. A lake with a small shining light at its center. They left the Dark Lantern in the middle of a lake right as winter is turning to spring. Some of the ice has to be rotten by now, too thin to bear a person's weight, and the sun is already touching the western horizon.

"Okay," she mutters, thinking hard. "Okay, I need you to go make sure that the little door is closed." The last thing they need is a stray puff of wind killing her friend.

"I can't," sighs the robin. "I can't get close."

"What do you mean you can't get close?"

"I went to get a better look and I hit something, so I went around and tried again and still hit something. I can't get in."

The witches left behind some kind of barrier. Beatrice curses again. "Is the door closed?"

The robin thinks it over. "I think so."

"Good."

"I want to get in," the robin sighs. "There's a good watering hole in there."

"What?"

"There's a hole to the water where you can drink, but you can't drink because it's behind the thing that I keep hitting. It would be a good place to drink."

A hole. She has a nasty feeling that she knows why the witches needed a hole.

Beatrice bites her lip. She needs to think about this logically. If the witches put the Dark Lantern out there this morning (and threw Wirt into a frozen lake), they had to have walked on the ice. So this morning, there was at least one path to the center that was solid enough to walk on. They'd probably reinforced the ice with magic, just in case. So if she can find where they went onto the lake, she can get close enough to prod the Dark Lantern out of the wards with a sufficiently long stick before a stray gust of wind knocks Wirt's soul into the water (it's not likely, but she knows better than to trust her luck) or, more likely, the heat it produces melts the ice beneath it.

She waits long enough to recruit an owl, trusting the bird's night vision more than her own. With the owl perched on her shoulder, Beatrice circumscribes the lakeshore, waiting for her guide to spot footprints.

A veil of clouds dims the moon and obscures the stars entirely. The wind is beginning to pick up. Snow, perhaps, or rain.

She nearly trips over a long, curving branch, which saves her the trouble of having to hunt one down. Beatrice grips the stick in clumsy fingers and hopes that the witches' ward only blocks living creatures, that an object can do what an arm cannot and prod the Dark Lantern to safety. If it can't, she doesn't know what she'll do.

Beatrice tells herself not to think about it. Try this first, then panic if nothing happens.

"There," the owl says. Beatrice can't see the trail of footprints—the clouds are getting thicker, further blotting out the moon—but the bird can. The girl reaches out with her stick, testing the ice as best she can.

It's solid, so she slowly, carefully makes her way forward, testing every step. Falling into the freezing water could kill her.

Now that she's on the lake, she doesn't need as much guidance from the owl. The Dark Lantern shines ahead of her, and it's a straight walk from the shore to the center.

The owl stays anyways.

Ice gives beneath her stick with a sickening crack. Beatrice scrambles back instinctively, chest heaving. The owl jumps from her shoulder.

"I don't suppose you can get that lantern, huh?"

The owl tries, but he can't get past the invisible barrier.

"Yeah, I thought not."

The Dark Lantern is barely a hundred feet away. She can't give up now. It's too close.

Beatrice takes twenty steps to her right and pokes at the ice again. It holds.

She has to change her route twice more before her impromptu staff dips directly into water. A hole, black as night in the firelit snow.

They'd thrown Wirt down there. Had he been conscious? She suspects not, hopes not. Wirt can swim. He'd have swum up if he could.

(What if he _is_ conscious, just bound somehow to the bottom of the lake, fully aware of everything? What if he's trapped down there just waiting for his light to go out? No, no, she needs to focus on the lantern.)

She creeps around the hole. Closer, closer, closer… and an invisible wall stops her.

Her goal is right there. It _has_ melted the ice; the surface upon which it sits is noticeably lower than the expanse around it, and there's a thin layer of liquid water surrounding the Lantern's base. She doesn't have any idea how long the remaining ice will hold.

Beatrice sinks to her knees, then her belly. She stretches out her stick as far as she can. It nudges the Dark Lantern away from her but not quite out of its shallow dip. A soft curse escapes her. More prodding only serves to push it further away, but eventually, she pushes it onto a thicker freeze.

Well, fine. She can work with that. She pushes the Dark Lantern to one side, getting it as close as she can to the barrier's boundaries as she edges closer.

There's a horrible, nightmarish moment when she knocks over the vessel of her friend's immortal soul. Her heart leaps into her throat, but the flame does not go out.

Finally, finally, the Dark Lantern passes through the barrier. Beatrice drops the stick, rises from her belly to her knees, hugs Wirt's soul to her chest. He's alive.

So great is her relief that Beatrice becomes careless. It's only for a moment, but a single moment is all that it takes. She stands, automatic, unthinking, and the ice gives way beneath her feet.

* * *

Wirt is halfway down the stairs when the pain-panic-weakness strikes. He gasps, falling to his knees, but no air reaches his lungs. They're full already, bursting with cold water.

He grabs at his neck, at the collar around his neck, squeezing the soaked wood and ice-covered iron with fingers that are going numb.

He has to do something, or he will die.

* * *

It takes Beatrice a moment to realize what's happened. Then she's kicking and flailing toward the surface, adrenaline lending her strength. She breaches the lake, gasping, and shoots her arm up. The Dark Lantern is—

It's very dim, but it's still glowing. For now.

Beatrice fumbles for the edge of the hole, grabs it in fingers that feel more like sticks of ice. The rime gives way beneath her hand. She kicks forward, trying to put the Lantern on a solid surface, but the cold is insidious. It's seeping into her, slowing her, draining stamina that she can't afford to lose. It's getting harder to move.

She grabs at the ice edge again, but her hand slips. "Owl!" she yells.

If she can't get out of this alive, at least she can save her friend.

* * *

Someone is trying to help him. Wirt senses frightened determination, selfless sacrifice. He reaches out to h͇̠̝e̞̪̲̣l̯p̠̖̟̻.

* * *

The Dark Lantern's stuttering light flares into a miniature inferno. Warmth rushes over Beatrice, thawing her extremities, lending strength to her limbs. She manages, after a few more failed tries, to clamber onto the ice. She lays there panting for several long moments, impossibly warm and dry.

But the fire is dimming again. Beatrice reaches into her pack, praying that the vial hasn't been destroyed or unstoppered. It hasn't. Laughing her relief, the girl pours a new stream of edelwood oil—drawn from Wirt's first faceless tree—into the Dark Lantern.

Wirt's safe, and he's keeping Beatrice safe in turn. Well, he's safe in the sense that his immortal soul won't gutter out (unless Beatrice falls through the ice again), even though his enchanted body is currently at the bottom of a bloody lake. She has a vivid mental image of fish swimming through his antlers, hiding in that black cloak he's so fond of. Thankfully, the lake is freshwater, so she doesn't have to worry about him getting eaten by a sea serpent.

The owl flaps over to her. He must be getting hungry by now, but he's a loyal creature, not willing to leave her in danger. "Are you all right? It is not good to swim in cold water."

"I'm fine," Beatrice assures him. "Wirt—the Caretaker—he's keeping me warm." She rises to all fours, listening intently for any protesting ice. It remains quiet, so she starts crawling forward, away from the hole she'd fallen through.

It's so much easier to go back. She has light now to see the path, the footprints she'd left and the slightly packed-down trail that the witches had taken. Her stick has disappeared—it might have fallen into the water—but if she just retraces her footsteps, she'll be safe. It's a bit awkward at first when she's crawling with the lantern balanced on her back, but once she's sure of the ice, she can stand up again.

The faithful owl is still with her. He only leaves once Beatrice is back on solid ground. She asks him to deliver a message to the people with hair like hers who are staying in the little human settlement off over that way. She wants her parents to know that she's safe, that the Dark Lantern is enough to keep her warm, that she might not make it back tonight because she's very tired. Her family is definitely fretting.

She starts to walk.

* * *

Wirt is sitting on the edge of his bed rubbing at his temples. His eyes ache, his chest feels empty, and he has an overwhelming sensation of déjà vu. Something's wrong. Something's very wrong.

His mother calls him down for breakfast. He shouts back some nonsense about being down in a minute before striding over to the mirror, looking for a sign that he's ill. The sight of his own face, his own body, makes Wirt do a double-take. Has he always been so short?

(Yes, he has.

No, he hasn't. He's supposed to be taller.)

"Wirt!" Amy repeats.

"I need to get dressed!" he yells. That's not strictly true. He's dressed already, he just doesn't feel quite right in these clothes. They're so light and colorful, and is he seriously wearing a _turtleneck_? He can't wear turtlenecks without—

Without—

He finds a navy button-up and a pair of dark gray slacks. His fingers look so strange as they work the buttons. Have they always been so… stubby?

Wirt shakes his head like a dog with water in its ear.

Breakfast is okay, even with Greg excitedly belting out Christmas carol every time he takes a bite. Wirt's proud to say that he only groans when his brother begins "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." He _hates_ that song with a passion, and it always gets stuck in his head.

He steps outside for his walk to school and is almost immediately distracted by the neighbors' ostentatious Christmas display. Wirt's always found their over-the-top decorations to be vaguely cringeworthy, but something about their small army of reindeer draws his attention. It's their antlers, he thinks.

His temples throb.

Jonathan backs out of the driveway, blocking Wirt's view. He startles, then resumes his walk to school.

The ground is only lightly dusted with snow, but the skies are white with the promise of more. Wirt barely feels the cold as he walks along, so lost in his thoughts is he. This is not uncommon, but for once, he's not mulling over verses and metaphors. Something is wrong about—about—he doesn't know what, exactly, because it feels like there's something wrong about _everything_ , and the wrongness is familiar.

The feeling only intensifies as he sleepwalks through the day, fumbling a question in algebra (not that he cares), hardly speaking a word during lunch, staring out the window in English even though they're studying poetry. The teacher's words drift into his head, and he finds himself thinking of the tree-studded hills of Habersham, the green valleys of Hall, how lovely the forest is in summer and winter and autumn and spring. It evolves into a daydream where he's walking, walking, walking, just taking it all in….

"Wirt," growls a voice like black velvet, if velvet could be annoyed. There's an intruder in his daydream, a shadow that he glimpses out of the corner of his eye. "I tire of these inanities. Wake up!"

"Wirt!" his teacher yells.

The boy nearly jumps out of his chair. His ears are ringing. "Yes?"

"What are the themes of 'Song of the Chattahoochie'?"

"Duty," Wirt tells him, the word heavy on his tongue. "Inevitability. And—how even though what you've got now is great, there's still more. The lordly main from beyond the plain."

A long-fingered hand grips his shoulder. "Pilgrim, wake!"

Wirt yells, twisting away from the voice. He falls to the ground, landing hard on his elbow, and stares up at the intruder. A tall shadow—

There's no one there.

* * *

Beatrice wakes as dawn limns the skies. The Dark Lantern has kept her warm all night even though fresh frost dusts the tree-tips, but the ground is not particularly comfortable. She's just glad that it didn't actually rain, though a few flakes of snow might have drifted down without waking her.

"Morning, Wirt," she tells the Dark Lantern. It seems to brighten ever so slightly, but that could be her imagination.

(What happens if Wirt's body is destroyed or badly damaged? Not for the first time, she wishes that this whole Beast thing came with a manual. They really need to find _The Tome of the Unknown_.)

"I have no idea how to get the rest of you out of the water. Maybe a net?" She shrugs. "I'm going to see if my family has any ideas. And food. They'll definitely have food. Let's get going."

* * *

Wirt fears that he might be going mad.

Hearing voices, something strange about his head, inexplicable déjà vu, generalized sense that everything was off, missing context for his relationships…. Insanity is the only solution he can think of.

"What happened between now and Halloween?" he asks.

His family stares at him. "Nothing," Amy assures him. "Why?"

"The last really clear thing I remember is deciding to check the attic for a last-minute Halloween costume. Everything after is like… like a watercolor rather than a photograph. You know, more blurry impressions than real, concrete memories." He spears a meatball and grimaces. How much food does he have to eat before he can plausibly stop?

"Well, nothing interesting happened," Jonathan points out. "The days blend together for me, too."

"But something did," Wirt insists. He drops his fork, the meatball forgotten, to gesticulate wildly. "Back at Halloween, I—I wasn't very good to you or Greg, I resented you, but now I just… don't. I feel like I closed my eyes and woke up as a different person."

"You've just grown up in the last few weeks, that's all," his mother insists. "I'm sure that if you just… open up a little, then you'll remember everything."

Wirt doesn't know what it is. Her tone, her phrasing, a gleam in her eyes? It makes his hair stand on end. "That's a really weird way to put it."

"Just give it a try," his mother advises.

_Don't_ , says something deep inside him.

But Amy is his mother and he trusts her, so he tries. He closes his eyes and opens his mind and almost immediately regrets it. He can feel— _something_ —it's insidious and cunning and it's slipping into his brain, trying to rearrange his thoughts, trying to sow poisonous weeds, trying to rewrite his memories (even worse than they already are). Wirt jerks away automatically, repulsed, a loud "N̠̖̪̣̫̠o̥̼̝͇̪̠!" bursting from his lips.

His protest booms like thunder, all rumbling and inhuman.

It sounds more familiar than his own voice.

The world swims around him as Wirt fights off the intrusion. The malevolent presence already has its tentacles deep inside him, reaching through his neck into his head and heart, and it's trying to do something but he won't give in this time, he won't, he won't—

Wirt jumps up from his bed, sides heaving with exertion. His hands, which had been positioned to rub at his temples, bunch into fists. He holds onto his memories with his fingertips as the world tries to reset again, putting him back on the bed with his hands on his head.

Wirt (the Pilgrim) bares his teeth, grips his hair, and refuses to give in.

He doesn't know how long he stays there, fighting the onslaught of whatever is trying to renew his ignorance. Hours, probably. There are times when he almost gives in to the pressure against his brain and the searing pain around his neck, but a deep-rooted kernel of stubbornness stays his hand.

Finally, finally, it's over. Wirt collapses panting onto his side. He aches all over, and the off-wrongness in his temples and eyes and chest is stronger than ever. His body does not fit him anymore.

But he remembers the entirety of his experience in this bizarre dream world, including his initial conclusion that it is, in fact, a dream.

Okay. Okay, so he's dreaming. He can wake up, right?

His mother—the dream-figment that looks like his mother—calls him down for breakfast. He ignores her.

He's not waking up. Oh, stars, is he in a coma?

He _is_ , isn't he. He got into a car crash or something and was gravely wounded, or maybe he caught some kind of horrible disease, or he drowned. That last one sounds most plausible, given that he'd been coughing up freezing cold water. He's almost drowned and probably has brain damage from oxygen deprivation, and his subconscious is trying to blot out the trauma by erasing huge chunks of his memory and placing him in this vivid dream.

"Wake up wake up wake up wake up…."

"Wirt!" shouts dream-Amy. "Is everything okay?"

"No!" he wails. "I might be dying of drowning-related brain damage!"

"No, you're not," she lies, sounding so much like his mother that he wants to cry. What if she's hurt too, her and Jonathan and Greg? The thought of his brother gasping for air leaves him with a gut full of cold horror. "You're completely fine, Wirt. Your life is just terrible, so you're taking a break."

"What?" He looks up and she's standing there, an uncanny smile on her face, eyes full of cold contempt.

"No one wants you to wake up," says the cruel facsimile of Amy Whelan. "Greg, Jonathan, and I are happier without you. Your classmates either don't care or are glad that you're not wasting their time in English class. And you know that your father never wanted you in the first place. He _definitely_ doesn't want you now that you're…" She gestures expansively. "…you."

"She's not real," Wirt reminds himself. "This is a dream."

But the dream's grip on his memories loosens then. He can't remember why or who, but he recalls with perfect clarity how it feels to be unwanted and despised, driven away like a rabid animal (like a Beast).

It stings.

Wirt shakes his head, trying to blot it all out, but the dream-fragment continues its relentless assault. "The world hates you. The few people who've noticed you're gone are glad about it… and I think you know that, don't you, Wirt?" His mother's voice is mocking. "Not that you can blame them. So cruel to your family, so self-centered and melodramatic, too weak to do anything for yourself except mess up. If you only knew what kind of a mess you'd left behind, you'd be begging to stay here."

"Shut up," he mutters, but he can remember the emotions, now: grief and horror at a sudden mistake, dull hopeless misery, isolation, weariness from trying to fix things. He remembers stress and anger and despair, though he cannot recollect what caused them.

"And now," the dream fragment sighs, "you finally have the chance to not ruin everything for everyone else. All you have to do is stop trying to escape. Stop resisting. Just give in to the dream, let it bury all the little details you keep noticing. For once in your life, Wirt, don't ruin everything you touch."

Despair seeps into him. He wonders what would happen if he just… stopped. Let himself live here, happy and loved.

"N̵o̷," rumbles the black-velvet voice.

And for a few seconds, Wirt is in a dark grove. He looks into the shadows, and the greatest shadow of all meets his gaze. "You forget that a part of me dwells within you," he scoffs. "I've no desire to spend the rest of your existence surrounded by the trifling remnants of your old life. Wake, Pilgrim. You are needed."

A blink, and he's back in his bedroom, with the simulacrum of his mother standing before him. It's smiling. "Just give in."

Wirt swallows hard. Squares his shoulders.

Water fills his lungs, pours from his mouth and nose. His hands and feet are chained together. A band of agony surrounds his neck.

Wirt grabs the collar—twigs and iron and antlerbone—and begins to pull.

* * *

"A _lake_?"

"A lake," Beatrice confirms, lips tight. "We're going to need a net and a _lot_ of Wirt's black turtles."

* * *

Wirt jolts awake in a cold, murky place where the only light comes from his eyes. He's hogtied and connected to an anchor (he doesn't remember the anchor. Where had that come from?), there's a confused fish staring at him, and his lungs are full of water. Panicked, he tries to cough it up, his chest heaving. It doesn't work.

He starts thrashing, flailing, as old trauma rears its ugly head. His world is half-flashback, half reality, all terrifying.

When his capacity for rational thought returns, Wirt realizes that he has to get out of his bonds before he can escape. At the very least he has to get away from the anchor. How can he do that?

Thinking of a solution takes longer than he expects. It's hard to focus on magic when his lungs are full of water, he's at the bottom of a lake, he doesn't know where his soul is (though he knows the general direction, the general distance), and he's staving off a minor existential crisis regarding the fact that he apparently doesn't need to breathe.

His first attempt doesn't work. He shapeshifts to deer form, but his hooves are still too wide to fit through the manacles and the position is incredibly uncomfortable. He shifts back after just a few seconds and tries not to think about how he might be trapped here forever, he might stay here until his flame dies away.

Think, think, think!

He considers and discards trying to take a third shape. That's a possibility, but he doesn't think he has it in him to learn new magic while beating away another panic attack.

Shadow-walking won't work either. Even if he could walk through the shadows, that would probably bring the manacles with him.

Inspiration strikes. Wirt grabs one of the twigs from his ruined collar. The wood, enchanted to constrain him, resists his will.

Something in him snaps, and he bares his teeth in a snarl.

The wood shifts within the lock of his handcuffs, forming a perfect key. The internal workings tumble into place. When Wirt turns the twig, his other hand springs loose.

After that, it's a simple matter to undo the other locks. Then he's swimming up, up to the dim light.

Wirt breaks the surface and almost immediately discovers that he can't get onto the ice. It keeps breaking off beneath his hands.

He has to go back under and resurface closer to the shore.

Cold terror strikes Wirt's heart. He'd rather face the Beast again… but he can't tread water forever. He has to get back onto dry land.

At least he doesn't have to breathe.

Wirt encounters an invisible barrier mere moments after he goes under. He is very much not in the mood and tears the magic to shreds. It is immensely satisfying.

The trip to the lakeshore only lasts minutes, but it feels so much longer. Finally, when he's close enough to the shore, Wirt braces himself against the ground and pushes the ice above him. It breaks.

He collapses almost the moment he's on land again, falling flat on his stomach and coughing out huge gushes of water. There's so much of it, so very much. He keeps expelling water until his sides ache, and still there's more.

When it's over, Wirt just lies there panting for several minutes. He's tired, but he doesn't want to sleep, not after that dream. Besides, there are things that he needs to do. The Dark Lantern is missing, he doesn't know if Andrew got home, those witches are still out there….

The Pilgrim begins to walk.

* * *

Wirt arrives in Maximspot more than half-expecting to encounter the witches again. He's not going to be nice this time. He'll bind them in grass and vines and reclaim his soul and, if necessary, _physically drag_ them to Kenningdole to face justice for their crimes.

He doesn't expect to be met by a stampede of familiar redheads, alerted to his approach by the local birds.

Beatrice laughs as she runs into his arms. He catches her automatically, a smile rising to his lips. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you, dummy. Oh! Speaking of which—" She reaches into her knapsack, withdraws a familiar red lantern.

" _Thank you_ ," Wirt chokes, clutching it to his chest. The flame dances. "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

She shrugs. "Well, you saved my brother."

Wirt grins at Andrew, who smiles shyly back. The tension drains from his shoulders. "You're all right?"

"I'm all right." A swallow. "Thank you, Wirt."

"You're welcome."

The Pilgrim realizes something then: his antlers are on full display, and not one O'Sialia minds. His grin widens.

Another small victory. He'll take it.

**Author's Note:**

> "The Song of the Chattahoochie" is a nature poem by Sidney Lanier. In it, the Chattahoochie River talks about the various things it encounters on its way to the sea, most of which try to tempt it to stay in the hills of Habersham and the valleys of Hall- but "Downward the voices of Duty call/ Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main." ('Main' is fancy poet speak for ocean.) I also considered Frost's "Birches," Henley's "Invictus," Yeats's "The Second Coming," and Kilmer's "Trees" either as the poem in Wirt's English class or otherwise sprinkled throughout the narrative. They're all good poems, but I think that Lanier's is my favorite.
> 
> It will probably be a few weeks before I publish another story in this series. Wirt needs to hunt him down some witches, then find The Tome of the Unknown, and then I have a couple more ideas but need to get there first.
> 
> This fic's title comes from "Forward Oneiroi" from the eighth episode.


End file.
